The present invention relates to providing a flavorful and aromatic additive. Such additive is applied as a casing or top coating to a tobacco material.
Popular smoking articles, such as cigarettes, have a substantially cylindrical rod shaped structure and include a charge of smokable material, such as shreds or strands of tobacco material (i.e., in cut filler form), surrounded by a paper wrapper, thereby forming a tobacco rod. It has become desirable to manufacture a cigarette having a cylindrical filter element aligned in an end-to-end relationship with the tobacco rod. Typically, a filter element includes cellulose acetate tow circumscribed by plug wrap, and is attached to the tobacco rod using a circumscribing tipping material.
Cigarettes are employed by the smoker by burning one end thereof. The smoker then receives mainstream smoke into his/her mouth by drawing on the opposite end (e.g., filter end) of the cigarette. Typically, a person using a cigarette draws on or puffs the article about 5 to about 10 times, and each puff lasts about 0.5 second to about 2 seconds. Typically, a burning cigarette has a useful lifetime of about 1 minute to about 10 minutes. Various types of tobaccos and other materials can be blended to form the cut filler of a cigarette. Generally, various amounts of flue-cured, Burley, Maryland and Oriental tobaccos are blended together and ultimately form cut filler. A typical blend also can include reconstituted tobacco material, volume expanded processed tobacco, cut rolled stems, tobacco substitutes, and other such materials. The cut filler frequently is treated with volatile additives such as top dressing or flavors in the form of an alcoholic solution. See, for example, British Pat. No. 910,451 to Davis and U.S. Pat. No. 4,819,668 to Shelar et al.
In addition to the volatile "top flavor" additives, another category of additives having a relatively low degree of volatility is also customarily applied to tobacco. This category includes materials such as sugars, licorice, cocoa, essential oils, fruit extracts and humectant. These materials are known in the art as "casing" materials and they are applied to the tobacco by dipping or spraying prior to the cutting or shredding operation.
There has been interest in other additives based on amino acids or sugars. For example, U.S. Pat. No. Re. 32,095 to Wu et al. proposes reacting sugars with ammonium hydroxide in the presence of a trace amount of an amino acid to provide flavorants suitable for use in smoking articles.
It would be highly desirable to provide flavorful and aromatic casing and top dressing compound which compliment the flavor and aroma characteristics of smokable materials.